Multitasking

I was watching the videos of Temple Grandin in the thread devoted to her. She mentioned inability to multitask as a common trait of autistics.

I am bad at multitasking, and often am amazed at the multitasking other people attempt to do (watching TV and doing homework, doing 3 things on the computer at once, listening to music and talking at the same time, listening to music and reading at the same time).

I can listen to music and drive or do art at the same time, but I prefer not to because these activities each deserve my complete attention. I will listen to music and do housework at the same time. In most other cases, I can only do one thing at once - so if more than one thing is going on, I'm only paying attention to one of those things.

Do you have trouble multitasking?
Can people actually focus on more than one thing at once?
Or can they just switch between things very quickly? (I can't)

I think it's more a case of switching quickly between the two things. You couldn't properly do them both at the same time because if you did then neither would be getting your complete attention. I would say I suck at multitasking. When doing multiple things on the computer like listening to music, editing photos and talking on MSN, my speed/reaction gets slowed down dramatically.

I would say it slows them down because with anyone, the more work you do at once the slower you go and the more your brain has to process. Then there's also more room for errors and mistakes while trying to do multiple things at once. Possibly if the multitasking was small/easy things then it might be faster.

I don't think I'm very good at multitasking, I get easily distracted talking to someone on MSN that I sometimes forget that I got a forum to look after.

Although weirdly enough, I can type something on the computer, listen to music and watch TV at the same time (tip just use the subtitles, works for me), although I end up mixing up my sentences and it would be a pain to go back and change it again.

It depends on the tasks, generally I cannot. When I am eating my cereal, I need to read something (like the cereal box or a newspaper) but when I am doing something involved in my obsessions like playing a video game or researching something on the internet, I can't do anything else I turn deaf!

I find multitasking pretty much impossible. The best thing to do is not to multitask at all - concentrate on one task until it is finished or until you have completed a certain chunk of the task. If you are interrupted by something important while you are in the middle of the task then devote your full attention to whatever interrupted you, for as long as is necessary, then try to remember to go back to what you were working on to begin with.

Trying to mutitask, for me at least, usually results in virtually nothing getting done properly. I try to follow the above approach, with varying degrees of success.

I multitask all the time, which is not a good thing. If i start out doing something, i'll go off on tangents solving related problems, suddenly remembering what i was supposed to be doing , do that for a while, go off on another tangent etc.
In the end all get's done but in double the time for what it would take to do the one original task.

Multi-tasking is pretty much a complicated process, which I am terrible at doing.
I think one of the problems is, is that there is too much to take in, to much thought process and so often times, I completely and utterly either shut down or I focus completely on one thing.
I can not switch between things, it's confusing and I can imagine that they would lead to hefty mistakes in comparison to just focusing on one task till completion.

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